Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana to Debut April 14 at 8 p.m., LSU's Claude L. Shaver Theatre
Imagine an orchestra performance that has all the sounds and soaring notes of an entire band section alongside sounds so unfamiliar that you cannot believe they are found in nature. Now imagine the performance composed, conducted and played using ordinary office laptop computers.
This is the musical performance guests at the debut of the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana will enjoy. The LOLs, as they are also known, will perform Wednesday, April 14, at 8 p.m. in the Claude L. Shaver Theatre within the LSU Music & Dramatic Arts Building on Dalrymple Drive. Tickets to this event are $10 for adults and $5 for students.
“Laptops and computational science are giving musicians a new paradigm for creating music,” said Stephen David Beck, Derryl & Helen Haymon Professor of Music in the LSU School of Music and LOL director. “The laptop orchestra is not meant to replace real orchestras. Rather, it uses the metaphor of the orchestra as a new way of teaching, creating and performing computer music. The LOL provides new avenues in which students can compose, interact and experiment with sound, merging technology with the artistic process.”
The Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana is a joint effort between the LSU College of Music & Dramatic Arts and LSU Center for Computation & Technology, where Beck is interim director and leads the Cultural Computing research focus area.
Currently, seven students enrolled in Beck’s music graduate seminar comprise the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana, which is the first such orchestra in the southern United States. The students create pieces to play on regular size laptop computers, each equipped with speakers and sound equipment. Some of the pieces are played in groups with students on different laptops, and others involve music conductions with a Nintendo “Wii Mote” controller or a software program to change and enhance the musical notes. The Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana students will conduct group pieces and will showcase some individual performances during the April 14 concert.
“We hope in the future, we can expand the number of performers, so that we can have as many as 25 laptops playing in the orchestra at once,” Beck said.
“The LSU Laptop Orchestra provides us with a portal to the future--fueled by imagination and transformed through possibility,” said Laurence Kaptain, dean of the LSU College of Music & Dramatic Arts. “This is another example of LSU faculty talent inspiring our students to learn through unique interdisciplinary collaborations that establish the enabling mechanisms for wider public access to culture and the arts.”
For more information on the concert or to purchase tickets, contact the Shaver Theatre Box Office at 225-578-3527 or visit www.cmda.lsu.edu.
CCT in the News:
People in Business for April 11, 2010
Source: The Advocate
Lectures this Week:
• FRIDAY -- The CCT Colloquium Series presents “Sensitive Information in a Networked World,” by Joan Feigenbaum, Yale University. The lecture will take place Friday, April 16, at 11a.m. in Coates Hall Room 256. This lecture is a joint event between CCT and the LSU Department of Computer Science.
• MONDAY -- The Computational Mathematics Seminar Series presents “An Algorithm for Surface Encoding and Reconstruction from 3D Point Cloud Data,” by Luke Owens, Visiting Assistant Professor in Texas A&M University Department of Mathematics. The lecture will take place Monday, April 19 at 1 p.m. in Johnston Hall Room 338. There will be a reception with refreshments prior to the lecture at 12:45 p.m.
• MONDAY -- Digital media pioneer John Worthington will speak as part of the AVATAR Lecture Series on “Digital Media and the Personal Computer-30 years and Counting.” The lecture will take place Monday, April 19 at 3 p.m. in Johnston Hall Room 338. There will be a reception immediately following the lecture at 4 p.m.
Please Note:
• The LONI Institute (http://institute.loni.org ), an initiative funded by the Louisiana Board of Regents and six member institutions (Louisiana State University, Louisiana Tech University, Tulane University, Southern University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and University of New Orleans) invites applications for LONI Institute (LI) Graduate Student Research Assistants. Assistantships are available at all member institutions. Research can be in any area of science, engineering, social sciences, or arts and humanities, although the fellow awards are intended to support graduate students whose research projects that require access to high-end computing facilities, networks, distributed data archives, and more generally, cyberinfrastructure. The awards will include a $20,000 stipend and tuition waiver. The six LI member institutions will jointly decide how best to fill these positions. The application deadline is April 15, and decisions will be made mid May. For more details, see http://institute.loni.org/fellows.php
• There will be an “Introduction to Ruby” tutorial with Dimitrios Galanakis on Thursday, April 15 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in 307 Frey. To register, please visit: http://www.hpc.lsu.edu//training/.
• Please note that the University has frozen all LaCarte spending, unless cardholders receive written approval for a purchase from Accounts Payable or Purchasing. If you have a purchase you wish to make that you feel may warrant an exemption to the spending freeze, please contact Theresa Markey or Andrew Cox in the CCT Business Office for guidance.
• LSU Day, a celebration of LSU's sesquicentennial anniversary, will take place on Saturday, April 24. The campus will host a large exhibition in the Quad and on the Parade Ground on this day to demonstrate work taking place in the different areas of campus for alumni, current or prospective students, and members of the Baton Rouge community. CCT's exhibit will take place in the visualization resources room in Middleton Library, and will feature the center's research videos and demonstrations of scientific visualization. CCT will also provide a Best of the Fest reel from Red Stick International Animation Festival to show in Dodson Hall, which will be used to screen films from different areas of campus throughout the day. For more information about CCT's exhibit for LSU Day, please contact Kristen Sunde at ksunde@cct.lsu.edu.
• The SC10 George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students throughout the world with the focus areas of high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, is accepting applications through May 1. Applicants must be enrolled in full-time Ph.D. programs at accredited colleges or universities, and they should have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral programs at the time of their nominations. Applicants must have letters of recommendation from a full-time faculty member at a Ph.D. granting institution. Details are available at: http://sc10.supercomputing.org/?pg=GeorgeMichaelMemorial.html.
• Early bird Registration and housing is now available for SIGGRAPH 2010 , the premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques. Register now for five days of education, exploration, and inspiration at SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles, July 25-29 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
• Applications for Student Volunteers for SC10 are now being accepted. The deadline to apply is Sunday, Aug. 27. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to apply as volunteers to help with the administration of the conference. In exchange, students will receive complimentary conference registration, housing (for out-of-town volunteers) and some meals. Volunteers will be expected to be available for a total of 4-5 hours of work per day during the week of the conference, which will take place Nov. 13-19 in New Orleans. Successful applicants will be notified of their acceptance by Sept. 30. If you have any questions please e-mail student-vols@info.supercomputing.org.
• Please remember to send your news concerning grants, awards, conferences, or other pertinent information to PR Manager Kristen Sunde at ksunde@cct.lsu.edu.
• Follow CCT with social media to access photos and see news, events or updated information. Both these pages are public; you do not need a Facebook or Twitter account to view the information.
Facebook group: LSU Center for Computation & Technology
Twitter @ LSUCCT
YouTube Channel: LSUCCT
Upcoming Grant Deadlines:
• Strategic Technologies for CyberInfrastructure (STCI)
April 21 2010 10:15 am
• Future Internet Architectures (FIA)
April 22 2010 10:15 am
At Most $ 9,000,000.00 available
• 2010 NSF MRI
April 21, 2010 5 p.m.
Note: Please see the CCT deadline Web site , as many NSF deadlines are listed here.
Publish Date:
04-13-2010
